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- [00:03]
A
Hey, everybody. Welcome to here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vesugian. Tuesday night marked the first major primary of 2026, and it was a doozy in Texas. The Republican Senate primary is headed to a runoff and polling issues in Dallas and Williamson counties slowed up results on the Democratic side. And we were following all of it on here's the Scoop, breaking down the races and the issues in a live special on YouTube. And we're sharing it with you now. We'll be back in your feed with a regular episode this afternoon. Who needs sleep, right? Hey, everybody. Welcome to here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vasugin. This is our live primary election podcast, the first major primary of the midterm season. It is a very big one. And as you all well know, because you have been watching Kornacki for hour to hour, that the polls are closed across the country from Texas to North Carolina to Arkansas. And we have a lot of questions that we want to answer on this podcast tonight. Have incumbents survived these races or not? Who's going to wing out MAGA or institutional Republicans? What type of candidate do Democrats actually want? And then where is this all leading? Right. We're looking towards November and we're even going to talk you guys tonight about 2028. But with that, I have to introduce the panel that is sitting beside me, including, by the way, Steve Kornacki. Do not go anywhere because Steve Kornacki is joining us. But we also have Kornacki and Koreki. They are not, they are not related. Natasha Correcky.
- [01:40]
B
We're still a killer duo, though.
- [01:42]
A
Yeah. Senior national political reporter joining us tonight. Jane. Tim on my left, senior political reporter as well, and then Jonathan Allen, senior national political reporter, all here to break it all down over the next 90 minutes or so. But of course, who do I have with me? The man of the hour, Steve Kornacki. And, Steve, you thought you were getting away from us because you said, guys, I'm done. Four and a half hours is enough. It is not enough because I need you back to break everything down. But I want you to start with this. I want you to start, Steve, with what we don't know and what is happening in Texas specifically with Senate Democrats.
- [02:18]
C
Yeah. Well, so two things, I guess. I have the Republican here, but this is happening with Senate Democrats because I think one piece of this story is that Senate Democrats want Ken Paxton to be the nominee in this Republican primary to unseat John Cornyn.
- [02:31]
A
Yeah.
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C
Three Quarters of the vote is in here and Cornyn has been resilient so far. One thing we don't know, who is going to finish first in this Republican primary. Cornyn has been leading all night. He just got a very good piece of news in Williamson county right outside of Austin. He is winning big and just padded his lead by an extra 7,500 votes. Also encouraging for Cornyn, we have been tracking the same day vote as it comes in. Most of what's coming in now, but most of what came in early was the early vote. The question is always, does the same day vote look different? Is it more pro Paxton? Paxton's only winning the same day vote, currently 4240 over Cornyn. That may not be enough to get him past Cornyn. Cornyn has an opportunity here to finish first in his preliminary and have unexpected momentum going into that runoff with Paxton. And of course, Cornyn's been trying to get that Trump endorsement. Is that something that could help him get it? But so the Democratic primary, I think the picture there may be a little bit clearer. Let's call that one up here. So you can see this has been a very good night, I think, for James Talarico. And it's now a 113,000 vote plurality that he enjoys over Jasmine Crockett. That's almost seven points. And I think a couple ingredients have gone into this. Number one, he has made incursions into Jasmine Crockett's backyard. So the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex really around here, her political bases In Dallas, like 30% of the vote is going to come out of here. But you can see it's not all Crockett's blue here. You got Talarico blue too. North of Dallas, these are big pieces of real estate. Collin County, Denton county right next door. These are double digit Talarico margins here. You know, the suburbs here where you got like college educated professionals here. Talarico doing very well, able to put some wins on the board in these counties. In Crockett's backyard also, he's rolled up massive margins around Austin, his political base. And I think there was some, some question here about where the Hispanic vote would go. Well, it's very clear. Take a look at South Texas here where you've got some heavily Hispanic counties right on the border where Brownsville is, Cameron county almost a 30 point Talarico margin. McAllen here, Hidalgo more than 2 to 1. Go up to Webb county where Laredo is more than 2 to 1. Go out to West Texas, you know, again, almost 30 points in El Paso county, very consistent here. It's clear Talarico's won the Hispanic vote. He's won it big. It's why he's been able to, throughout the night, really build this lead statewide. You know, Crockett has had Dallas county, lots of issues in Dallas County. I know, but we have more than half the vote in from there. She did well. She didn't do as well as I think she wanted to. She's done very well in East Texas, where there's a large black population. She's doing good in Harris county, where Houston is. But again, that lead she has there only translates to about a 16,000 vote plurality. She's facing a deficit of over 100,000 here. So it's just there's more breadth to the support that Talarico has demonstrated tonight.
- [05:23]
A
Hey, Steve. So with Jasmine Crockett, does she have the ability to make up what we are still missing in Dallas County?
- [05:32]
C
No, not that. Not a gap like 111,000 I can show you here. We think it's about 60. Is a lot of questions here about what's going to count with. With these provisionals and stuff here. That's beyond my abilities at the moment. But roughly speaking, here you can see that that's about 190,000 votes that are in. In Dallas County. She's won. This is the early vote you're looking at. So this has had nothing to do with today. This was all cast, like, days, weeks ago. She's netted a 43,000 vote plurality from that. What do we think is left here? We say 61%. You know, we're talking about maybe 120,000 votes here. You know, probably max. 120,000. Probably max. And again, you're looking, if you're Crockett, at a statewide gap of 111,000 votes. Yeah, sure. You win 100% of those. Maybe she's winning 60% of the early vote. That leaves a lot to make that up.
- [06:24]
A
So, Steve, full disclosure here for the audience just to understand. We had planned that you and I were going to switch off and you were going to kind of go to bed because we thought everything was going to be in and wrapped up. But instead, we are keeping you here for the next 90 minutes or so because we're still waiting for results. So we're going to be toggling back and forth with you because I want to look through all of these results as they're coming in because we are still waiting for a lot of things. Can you just talk quickly, Steve, about why it is. We haven't gotten these results in yet.
- [06:50]
C
Yeah, I mean, look, I keep saying this early same day, the way it works in Texas is so many people vote early. It's the majority of all the vote. And they can count that up ahead of time before the polls close. And these counties just release massive batches of vote pretty quickly after the county. After the polls close, you'll get two thirds of the vote. But that same day vote, the stuff that folks go out to the polls and do today, it can be agonizingly long in some of these counties. And so you're just waiting for that sort of second piece of the puzzle to kind of come into.
- [07:22]
A
Okay, Jane, I want to bring you into the conversation here because I know you've had some new reporting on what's actually happening in Dallas county and why there was this mix up. You've got now the Texas Supreme Court involved in this. Can you walk us through what has happened there?
- [07:33]
D
Yeah. So the Texas Supreme Court overruled, at least on a temporary basis, a lower court that had said you could vote for two more hours in Dallas county because all of these voters were so confused about the change. So Texas voters are really used to using county wide voting, where you can go kind of anywhere. And they did county wide voting through. Through early voting. So yesterday you could go vote somewhere where today you had to go to your assigned precinct center.
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A
And this is different than it used to be.
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D
This is different than it used to be.
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B
And why is that?
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D
Years past, they've done this before, but they haven't done it in a while. And it's just because you have to find a very narrow place to go vote. You have a tiny. You know what I mean? It's like your exact precinct, a small number of voters in each spot. This also means that Republicans had a different location than Democrats to go vote. So families might be splitting up to go vote today. And it's just confusing.
- [08:27]
A
The issue, though, is also that there was this decision made by a lower court judge essentially saying you can extend the voting for two hours. Because the Democrats were saying, listen, there are folks that still need to vote that haven't been able to vote because they're confused about where they're supposed to be. Right. And then you have the Texas Supreme Court coming back and saying, no, no, no, that's not going to work. So what happens to those votes? I mean, do we know how many people actually voted in that extension of two hours?
- [08:51]
D
So because it's a court order, all those ballots would have been provisional, the people who got in line after 7pm because, as you know, there may have been people who got in line before seven that were also voting after seven. It's the people who got in line after seven. Those ballots will be provisional ballots.
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A
Yeah.
- [09:05]
D
And the Supreme Court has said put those in a box on their own. And we're going to decide on this later. So we're waiting to hear how many people actually voted after 7 o' clock and how many people and whether or not we count those ballots. I mean, you don't put ballots in a box and say keep them separate unless you're thinking about tossing them. So that's what we're waiting to find out. But this is in Dallas county is very important to Jasmine Crockett. That is her base and her stronghold. So this could be very influential.
- [09:32]
A
Well, I mean, Jasmine Crockett is already saying she's already alleging disenfranchised voters, John. Right. That is, that is kind of the statement that she made at her campaign headquarters a few hours ago. At this point, no matter what comes out of this evening and the way in which Steve laid it out for us, it doesn't seem like she could make up the difference. There is going to be an issue when it comes to, it seems, the Crockett campaign and whether or not they agree with the final call here.
- [09:58]
E
My guess is what you're seeing here is a placeholder argument for her, Right. If it becomes close, if she feels like there's an opportunity to contest the race, then perhaps this is the thing that she will rest on. You're looking at the numbers Steve's been describing the numbers, hasn't called it yet, you know, the final, final call. But we can all see what that gap is and how far it would take for her to get close. It's not a huge victory, but we're looking at 5% or so for Talarico. That's not something that you're going to make up with the argument that some of these voters were disenfranchised by the timing of when the polls closed in one county or even if you were to do a few counties. So unless she makes up a pretty strong gap, I think you will see that argument fall away. She will also get a ton of pressure from within the Democratic Party to concede if she's losing and to not make an argument that there is election rigging, because the Democrats have tried very hard over the course of the last four years to be the party that doesn't accuse the elections of being Fraudulent and rigged because they watch what Donald Trump did in 2020.
- [11:04]
A
We're going to get into kind of the nitty gritty of the Talarico vs Crockett a little bit later on. But I kind of want to get your top line, Natasha, takeaway as well.
- [11:15]
B
Yeah. I mean, along the lines of what you're saying. I mean, certainly Craig was trying to lay the groundwork tonight. You know, early on, this is gonna be my argument.
- [11:23]
A
Yeah.
- [11:24]
B
And it obviously is very important to her.
- [11:27]
A
But by the way, that was also kind of part of her campaign. Right. Talarico was like, I'm gonna unite people, but I'm also gonna bring people from the center to vote for me, maybe even Trump voters to vote for me. Whereas Jasmine Crockett is like, I'm gonna bring people out that have maybe never voted before. Right. She is actually looking for the kind of quote unquote disenfranchised voter.
- [11:47]
B
Well, that's. That's exactly right. I mean, and so she does have an argument along those lines. And there is gonna be a ton of pressure for her to just. If the numbers continue as they are just talking to, you know, Tel Rico advisor who says they, they're feeling like they just want someone to call it. They think that, you know, they think that they've won and they're just waiting for somebody to call it. But of course, you know, we have to see how this plays out. And if it turns into something ugly, that will be a mess for Democrats right now. They're in a very good position just considering what's happening on the Republican side.
- [12:23]
A
We're going to take a very quick break and then we'll be back with our primary night special.
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C
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C
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- [13:03]
D
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- [13:37]
A
and we're back with here's the Scoops primary night special. Bringing in Steve Kornacki. Kornacki, I wanna go back to you because you were talking at the top as I came to you. You know, I asked about the Dems, but you went to Republicans and I get it, something was breaking with the Republicans. But let's talk about that now. Cornyn and Paxton and where we are with things.
- [13:56]
C
Yeah, let's call that one back up on the screen here. Right, so it's about a 30,000 vote gap here. Cornyn leading. Paxton has been, you know, Cornyn's been resil with this lead all night. So two things are happening right now. One is almost over. You just see a few, the gray means no vote yet. You see a few gray patches. None of these are really our population centers that we're, that we're looking at right here. So there is still some of that early vote to come in. That'll, that'll be early vote that gets reported out first there. But the thing that's really overtaking now is the same day vote. So you know what you can, what we can sort of gather here is that Cornyn has won the early vote. Okay, there's still a little bit more of it to come, but he's going to end up winning the early vote here probably by about three points. The question is how different is that same day vote. That's going to be the rest of what fills in in these counties. Paxton, we've been tracking it so far, is winning that same day vote. About 4,240, about 4,340. That's not enough because there's two buckets here. The early vote is the big one, in the same day vote is the smaller one. And if Cornyn's winning this one by three and if Paxton is winning this one by three, there's going to ultimately be a difference favoring this side. So Cornyn is on the right side of the equation right now. The same day vote would have to get more friendly to Paxton if he's going to make up that gap. But that is a, that's a small gap. You could see it. It's still, it's still certainly possible. But the, the possibility that I think is, I think Would have been a surprise to a lot of people coming into tonight. That Cornyn finishes first is very much there.
- [15:27]
A
I think one of the things that's standing out, you guys, as we're taking a look at this, is this is literally one of the most, if not the most expensive Senate primary race ever run. Right. And if you're taking a look at the numbers, I believe it's $100 million almost alone on the Republican side, $78 million spent on Cornyn's campaign alone. I mean, obviously, money is working and money is talking because he's came up on top, and that's not John Allen. What was predicted when it came to Paxton and Cornyn? There was a real concern, it seemed, within the Republican Party that Paxton was going to come out on top, and they felt as if he was beatable in a way, possibly by Democrats in a general matchup.
- [16:07]
E
Yeah, I think there still is that concern among Republicans. Right. There is still that concern after you saw what happened tonight or what's continuing to happen tonight, Certainly Cornyn doing better than a lot of people expected. On the other hand, he's been a senator for four terms and he's running in a primary and is, you know, looking at 42, 42.5% of the vote or so. You can't feel great about that if you're John Cornyn. You can't feel terrible about where you stand if you're Paxton. You talked about all the money. Now we're going to see more money spent in a runoff between these two guys.
- [16:42]
A
Well, that was the other concern, is that if. Well, you know, they said if, in fact, it's Ken Paxton as the candidate. Right. They're gonna have to spend a heck of a lot more money because of all the scandal that is surrounding him. But either way, there's gonna be money when it comes to this runoff.
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D
And this is not money they want to spend in Texas. Republicans want that money to go elsewhere in the country. Texas should be so easy for them. And it's a big, expensive media market. And if you have to spend for 12 more weeks of a runoff, if you have to spend to defend Paxton through potentially divorce details that may come out. I mean, this is not what Republicans want to do, but.
- [17:18]
B
And it's exactly what Democrats want. Want to happen. I mean, that this is the ideal scenario for them. That would be the ideal scenario for them if they had a Paxton. It's more of an unknown quantity, a little bit more of an unknown quantity than Cornyn. And, you know, they can just Rip it apart and. And force Republicans to spend in what typically is a very safe state.
- [17:40]
A
Natasha, how much of this is a Wesley Hunt problem, I. E. The third guy came in and he took the vote to end the.
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B
Well, there is a lot of Republicans.
- [17:48]
A
Yes.
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B
I mean, yeah. I mean, look at the numbers. The numbers speak for themselves. That would have made the difference potentially to avoid a runoff one way or another. The other takeaway, though, is that we kept hearing that Paxton was going to run away with this, that, you know, Cornyn was going down, and that did not happen either. So this is going to be really interesting for the Republicans and it's going to be, you know, vital here that they don't drag this out so long and don't muddy up each other so much that it ends up helping Democrats in the state.
- [18:20]
E
And to the point you were making, Yasmin, we don't know what Wesley Hunt's voters are gonna do. Yeah, we're not sure. We don't know how they're gonna break, so could be. Either way, there is gonna be a dogfight over them. John Cornyn's not gonna go down easily. And the Republicans in Washington, the Senate Republicans, are not gonna let one of their own go down easily. They are going to, to your point, spend, spend, spend and raise, raise, raise. Now, I'm of the view that raising money is a bottomless pit in politics. And so it's not necessarily bad to spend a lot of money because you can go back to the same donors or a new set of donors and ask them for money in Texas and go ask them for money in North Carolina and you know, pick all the states that you, that you want to say before you do the Howard Dean scream, there will be money in all of it.
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A
Do we have that sound?
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E
No, I will not do that for you.
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D
But if you're James Telerco, you have 12 weeks to campaign against Ken Talarico. My goodness. Excuse me. It's getting late. But think, I mean, think about it. He is a seminarian, he appeals to a conservative, Christian kind of voter. Paxton has, you know, I covered his impeachment down in Texas. And you saw these die hard conservatives who believed that, that Paxton was the moral, the faithful candidate and then went in front of the Senate and said, look, I think this is incredibly corrupt. The things that I saw when I worked for him were incredibly corrupt. And there was not a huge. In this impeachment hearing, there was not a lot of effort to discredit these witnesses, these die hard Republicans who worked for him for many years and were whistleblowers against him. There was just a desire to keep him in the job. So you put one of those people in a campaign ad, or even you just take the footage from Texas Senate impeachment hearings and you put it in a campaign ad and say something different. I mean, this is a boon for him.
- [20:08]
A
I mean, none of these guys actually got a Trump endorsement, though. And I'm not sure if that's because the President didn't actually want to endorse anybody or he just didn't know who was actually going to win.
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E
John, maybe all of the above. Right? There's like.
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A
Let me just interrupt you for a moment. Ken Paxton is not unlike Donald Trump as a candidate. Right.
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E
They share some flaws and maybe share some strengths. But some of the things that we were talking about in terms of the scandals that have affected Ken Paxton are also things that have affected Donald Trump or that Donald Trump has affected in terms of his personal life. So, yeah, I mean, I think it would be weird for Trump to criticize Paxton over his personal peccadilloes or whatever you want to call it. It's way too late for that kind of a word. Although James said seminarian before, so I
- [20:59]
A
think seminarian is a much better word.
- [21:01]
E
I had to get like, that's like a multi syllabic thing in there. But I think that, you know, it's hard for Trump to make that criticism. At the same time, I don't think Trump loved the idea of getting behind John Cornyn, who is seen by a lot of MAGA voters as insufficiently loyal to MAGA ism and a little bit of an anachronism of a time of the George W. Bush, Texas Republican Party. I'm not sure there was a win for Trump in getting involved, and I'm pretty sure that Trump didn't think there was a win for Trump in getting involved either.
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D
Yes, he wants a winning by doing this because he stays silent and all of these candidates have to move closer to him because they have to be as Trumpy as possible. And then Trump gets to come in in the runoff and declare the winner.
- [21:44]
A
Well, as we're speaking of Trump endorsements, if you look briefly to North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis was not running for reelection. Michael Whatley got the Trump endorsement. Right. Former RNC chair. He pulls through, Natasha.
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B
He pulls through. I mean, I can't say I was completely, you know, surprised by that one. That one, you know, is, is a little bit more. We, we know now what we're, we're dealing with in that state. It is going to be another state. That's so interesting. You know, not as red obviously as, as Texas, but North Carolina is another one that you know, we heard this so much in 2024. Oh, Kamala Harris is going to take North Carolina. It's finally going to go blue in a presidential race. You know it hadn't since the first Obama and no, Trump took it, he did better. But having a former governor now running for the Democrats, I mean it is going to be. Republicans have, I mean I take your point John to there's money here and there's money there. I think especially in the presidential race. That's true but I just, I don't know it'll be. They certainly have. Republicans certainly have an advantage like they've never had before with money. So we're going to see that, we're going to see that play.
- [22:55]
A
So we're going to talk about the Dem Senate race in a moment but we're getting some new results in. I want to go to Steve Kornacki with those. What do we got Steve?
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C
We've got cliffhangers galore when it comes to what a nice incumbents here. So yeah, I got, I'll start here. I might as well because I got it teed up here. Tony Gonzalez, Republican, 23rd District. This is, you know, right along the, the Rio Grande, the border here from the San Antonio suburbs to the El Paso suburbs. Gonzalez leading here with about two thirds of the vote in. But there's been some signs the race is really, I think going to be decided right in here. Half the vote comes right out of Bexar County. This is San Antonio, San Antonio suburbs, you know and another about 25% is going to come out of the two counties right to the west here. So let's just show you Bexar county here because Gonzalez is leading. Okay. And there's more vote to come. It's the same day. The trouble for Gonzalez is this. In 2024 he narrowly defeated the same opponent, Brandon Herrera in the Republican primary. He won it by this much. When he did that, he won Bexar county, biggest part of the district by 8 points. You can see right now his margin is 6.5. The problem for him is this same day vote has been trending toward Herrera. If that continues, it's a huge if. But if that continues, then this 6.5 is going to continue to come down and Gonzalez isn't going to get anything like he got in 2024 out of Bexar County. When Bexar county saved him from a challenge from Herrera. So let's see what happens as the more same day vote comes in here. But Gonzalez needs it to turn around. Six and a half may not be enough for him out of there. Anything less than that's going to put him in big danger. But not as much danger as right now. Dan Crenshaw is in in the second district here. This is the northern suburbs of Houston. Crenshaw the only House incumbent Republican in Texas without Trump's endorsement in this race. Steve Toth, a state legislator from this is Montgomery county here. This is a little bit more than half of the of the district and you can see he is just running up the score over Crenshaw here in Montgomery County. The other half of the district roughly is in Harris County. Northern Houston suburbs here closer but Toth leading here again it's just same day vote to come in. It's a clear advantage for Toth. The only question is somehow you see it doesn't add up to 100. There are some minor candidates. Texas is a runoff state. It's not just if Toth finishes first. He's got to finish above 50 to win it tonight. But wow, everything he's been seeing tonight has been super encouraging for him and super, super discouraging for Dan Crenshaw. There's going to be an incumbent who loses in this district. A battle of incumbents in the 18th district. Two Democrats, Christian Menefee elected like five weeks ago. Al Green a lot longer ago than that. It's going to come down. This is Houston. It's going to come down to the same day vote here you can see the vote is tracking toward Menifee would need to turn around in a big way otherwise Al Green is going down. Put a pin in this one because this is Dallas county where you've been talking about all those issues with the vote count. We don't know how long it's going to take but we got the early vote. Julie Johnson not what she wanted to see in it. Colin Allred trying to win back a seat that he used to hold double digit lead in the early vote there again we'll see when that gets resolved but that's not a good start if you're Julie Johnson. And then over in North Carolina, wow we are. There's just a scattering of votes left but Valerie Fousshee, two term incumbent facing a challenge from the candidate she beat the first time she won the seat in 2022 in that Democratic primary. It's been razor thin all night but with Almost nothing left. Foushee is hanging on a 1200 vote lead, 1% for her.
- [26:29]
A
That seems like, I mean, that's closer than we thought it was going to be. Or, you know, she's definitely narrowed the gap along, hasn't she, Steve?
- [26:36]
C
Yeah, no, if you're Foushee, you're feeling as good as you can feel. Oh, Alam. Yeah. Well, no, this was, look again, this is a rematch from 2022. In 2022, this was a nine point race. This district was redrawn. Part of that broader Republican push to redraw the lines across North Carolina here. I think there was some thought here, I'll show you over in Durham County. This is Alam's base. She's a Durham county commissioner, Duke University, and I was here five point, little bit less than a five point win for Alam in Durham. She did better than this in 2022 in her own backyard. The first time she ran against Fushi then she did tonight. I think there was a thought that she would do a little bit better in Durham and there might have been a thought too, just looking at the energy in the party again, she had that Sanders endorsement. You know, she had made the past pro Israel supportive fushing issue. There was a thought that in a district like this, which is overwhelmingly Democratic, that the energy might be more on alarm side this time. And she was much better funded alum this time than she was last. But again, Fuxi has been proving resilient tonight.
- [27:40]
A
So, so kind of the narrative that we had been talking about both behind the scenes and in front as well, about Democrats maybe supporting more of the progressive candidate, that's not bearing out there when it comes to Alam, who had the Sanders endorsement and money behind her.
- [27:54]
C
Yeah, I mean, super, super tight. There's certainly plenty of support for her. She's going up against an incumbent. But yeah, I mean, it's, it's. I would just say, you know, Fushi has been. Every update we've had tonight here, she's gotten just enough.
- [28:07]
A
By the way, if you listen to the podcast earlier today, Kornacki only drinks water. So go have a glass of water, Kornacki, and I'll get back to you. But he doesn't drink too much. And you can guess why he doesn't drink too much because he's been on the air for so long. I'll get back to you in a second, Kornacki. Thank you, John Allen, you're chomping at the bit to talk. You've been moving around in your chair a little bit. What do you want to say?
- [28:26]
E
Well, I just, I was looking at Valerie Fuchsi there in North Carolina. And so two things. One, I think you make a good point about the question of how progressivism is doing. There's another axis on which this is being fought, which is generational lines. Democrats are sick of old Democrats, Democratic voters are sick of old Democratic lawmakers. And Valerie Fousshee is about 69 years old and Alam is much younger. So I think that's another, we don't
- [28:50]
A
need to be ageist.
- [28:51]
E
But the dam didn't break.
- [28:53]
A
Yeah, it didn't break.
- [28:54]
E
It did not break for Valerie Foussi in North Carolina. And I think that's interesting. And I think it probably speaks to the establishment of the Democratic Party still being stronger than its insurgent wing in a lot of parts of the country in a way that the Republican Party, the establishment has not been right. Like the establishment party of the Republican Party got destroyed by Donald Trump. I also think just looking at some of those Texas House races, you know, Dan Crenshaw lost the Trump endorsement and lost any chance of winning. And then fascinating, Tony Gonzalez in Texas with a huge scandal, the alleged affair breaking late and now, you know, probably getting forced into a runoff. He may be before the Ethics Committee in the House very soon because they had a blackout through this primary, through this primary date where the Ethics Committee could not move on him because the runoff is so long. They will have an opportunity starting tomorrow morning to investigate him and to potentially have findings against him. It'll be interesting to see whether Speaker Mike Johnson wants that to happen. If they want to get rid of him, if they think that he's too much of an albatross because of this really crazy story that folks should probably click on somewhere. Cuz there's some parts I'm leaving out here for family television.
- [30:09]
A
Best you leave it out.
- [30:10]
E
Yeah. But the point is there could be an Ethics Committee move on Tony Gonzalez as early as tomorrow.
- [30:18]
A
We're going to take a very quick break and then we'll be back with our primary night special.
- [30:27]
D
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B
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- [32:02]
A
Welcome back to here's the Scoops Election Night Special. So I keep saying go to YouTube, ask some questions. And we've gotten some questions. Jane, I'm going to lob this question over to you. The question is we have seen much higher than average turnout for Democrats, historic numbers in Texas, by the way. I think we're cresting over 2 million at this point when it comes to Democrats. And that was a couple hours ago. What kind of news does this spell for the general election? Let me add on to that. So for the midterms and then obviously the general in 28, I mean, if you've got Democratic enthusiasm, what does that mean?
- [32:35]
D
I mean, it's not just Democratic enthusiasm. This is just unparalleled growth in both registered voters and people who are turning out. I will say there's a couple of things happening here. One, it's just an interesting primary. You know what I mean? Democrats often get one chance, but not two really prominent candidates who have a lot of money and support and firepower. So I think there's a desire to weigh in if whoever wins can pull all of those people together. You know, Democrats have been saying for what, 15 years that Texas can go purple. We'll see if that actually pans out. But if you can turn out voters,
- [33:11]
A
since I've been talking about politics, the story has been, can Texas go purple.
- [33:17]
D
I mean, I wrote that story the first time, what, 15 years ago.
- [33:19]
A
Here is it this time.
- [33:22]
D
But I mean, all of that combined, I will say the numbers are really big. I mean, you look at some of the early voting turnout, and it's twice what it was the previous midterm election. You know what I mean? There's just like a lot of people who are turning out. Voter registration has surged for both parties, though. So it is important to say there's just a lot more voters in general.
- [33:40]
B
Yeah.
- [33:40]
D
But let's see how we go.
- [33:43]
A
If we look at James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett, because we haven't really gotten into that. Aside from what is happening in Dallas county and what has not come in so far, there's not a lot of daylight, Natasha, between their issues. Right. And where they stand on things, this was really about for Democratic voters, the type of person they wanted to represent them in the state of Texas as a senator and by the way, who they feel like could actually beat either a Ken Paxton or a John Cornyn. How are you seeing that bear out in our results so far? Because obviously it's not called yet.
- [34:16]
B
Right. I mean, you know, with that caveat, obviously. But you have, you know, one thing that was the X factor all along here was the Latino vote. Where were they going to, you know, where was that going to go? And I think what we're seeing so far in these results is that Telorico was able to really bring them into his coalition. You know, as Steve was saying earlier, he also ate into, you know, some of Crockett's, you know, stronghold. But to get that Latino vote, that is really something. And, you know, for Democrats, probably very encouraging looking, you know, toward a general election, if he can also pick up, you know, again, we will start back with the seminarian. He was so unique and in part because he was able to bring in this Christianity. And he came out and one of the things that really put him on the national stage was that he said, you know, no ten Commandments in schools. Why? Because it was unchristian. And that was his argument. And it really took off. And his argument was, hey, you know, does Jesus want to keep out somebody who's Muslim? Does he want to alienate someone who is Jewish? And the answer was no. And he ended up like, it ended up losing that fight, but it really put him on the stage. And I think what we thought with Talrico was, could he be a Beto o' Rourke type person where he's sort of the Media favorite, the media darling, but can't really go beyond that. Then he had this Colbert moment a
- [35:56]
A
couple of weeks ago, which raised him a heck of a lot.
- [35:59]
B
So much money, I think it was over two and a half million dollars in one night.
- [36:02]
A
But then you have Jasmine Crockett, who some could argue, despite the fact that she is very left, very progressive, is also to a certain extent fighting and speaking as if she is President Donald Trump. Right? She fights a little bit like Donald Trump.
- [36:15]
D
She has a very Trumpian way of talking.
- [36:17]
A
Yeah.
- [36:17]
D
I mean, you hear her talk about these voting issues in Texas, in Dallas, and I mean, tomorrow I am almost certain we're going to hear her say something to the effect of this is voter fraud. She's going to go past voter and disenfranchisement. She already called it a fast one. Well before this election started, she said Republicans are pulling a fast one. And what actually happened is that Dallas Republicans wanted to hand count their ballots. Now hand counting ballots is really time consuming, really ineffective, inaccurate. Dallas Republicans who are buying into the election conspiracy theories that the machines are insecure. At the end of the day, Dallas Republicans did the financial math and realized they couldn't get all the people there and they couldn't get all the money to pay for it because it is so hard to do. And they went back to the machines. But that's why we have precinct level voting in that county. That's how we have thousands of people sort of disenfranchised. I mean, we knew this was going to be an issue. But I do wanna go back to something Natasha said. The idea that it's that Christian conservative, the conservative Democrat, the crossover voter who might be listening to Rogan, I mean, that is what the congressional map in Texas was drawn on. The Hispanic voters that Trump pulled into his party in 2024. So that map gets a lot weaker if those voters are at the top of the ticket going for a Democrat. You know, these are split ticket voters, so people can pick and choose how they want to vote. But I do think you can see a lot of things start to crumble if this all comes together for Democrats.
- [37:47]
A
John, I know you want to say something, but I want to call for more questions first. And we're going to go to Kornacki and you know, it's Kornacki, so you're going to have to hold on for a. Again, we want to hear from you guys. We want to get your questions. You just saw it. I'm asking the questions on air, so submit them. Post a question on our YouTube page. And we're going to try and work it in and you can post your questions and I will ask them to the ever important Steve Kornacki, who I'm going to go back to now, who is now in front of that big wall once again. And walk us through Kornacki. Let's talk House races now and where we're at with things there.
- [38:17]
C
Yeah, great timing is there? It is Steve Toth projected to defeat Dan Crenshaw in the Republican primary. You have a incumbent going down in a House race, Dan Crenshaw, the only Republican incumbent in Texas running without Donald Trump's endorsement. Wow. Does it show in these results? Really kind of a landslide. And it was just this would have been called a lot sooner if they counted votes faster in Harris county and Montgomery county, but really an overwhelming verdict here. It's an interesting part of the state in Texas politically. Here again, this district is split about half between the northern suburbs of Houston and Harris County. You see Toth there by about nine points currently. And then this a little bit more on this side, Montgomery county, the Woodlands, that's where Toth is from. And this is a very interesting area. It's just dramatically quickly growing. They've added hundreds of thousands of people in the last 10, 20 years there, and it's become one of the most conservative, most Republican large counties in America. Donald Trump won a larger raw vote plurality in Montgomery County, Texas, than any other county in America in 2024. And so maybe it's fitting that in Trump's best county, the one Republican incumbent he didn't endorse is getting trounced and it's cost him his seat.
- [39:34]
A
Kornacki, I got a YouTube question for you before we discuss what you just mentioned, because that's a big one, I think. Dan Crenshaw, that call this YouTube question is where did Democratic turnout come from? Young voters, suburban voters, Latino voters, and can it hold through November? I assume you cannot answer the second part of that question, but you could answer the first part.
- [39:51]
C
Yeah. Well, in the other issue, let me call it the Democratic race, unfortunately, we don't, we don't have a, an exit poll in this one. So we're taking guesses. And some of this we're going to have to really, it's, it's a, not an exciting answer. We're going to have to look at some precinct stuff tomorrow. But I mean, broadly, what we can see here, you know, like I said, is to me, this, this is the kind of thing it shows. You look, the overall Turnout in this race, sitting there, 1.7, 1.8 with a lot more to come. It's going to be over 2 million eas. It's massive turnout. It's a story. We know, though, I think in a way, we know that any time there's an election. Yeah, certainly in the Trump era, Democratic voters flood the polls. They particularly flood the polls in places like Travis County. Okay. This is overwhelmingly Democratic. This is right around the state Capitol, Austin, University of Texas. This is James Talarico's political base as well here. He got a monster number. He got monster turnout here. You know, you're talking about the demographic here in the Democratic Party in particular is sort of more upscale voters. Voters with college degrees, white collar professionals, very anti Trump, very engaged, politically high information consuming, and they crawl over coals for the opportunity to vote. And see, every election is a chance to kind of vote against Republicans. We've been talking about that in special elections, in primaries, races for state Supreme Court in Wisconsin. And I think we're talking about it in this race, in this Democratic race in Texas tonight. So I think the Democratic energy is going to be there in November. I don't think there's any question about that. These things reinforce it. I think the thing Democrats maybe have to grapple with here out of Texas tonight is what happened on the Republican side, what they thought was going to happen. Cornyn continues to run in first place right here. We continue to track the same day vote. Paxton's leading it, but only by a small amount. The possibility that Cornyn comes out in first place tonight, goes to the runoff with some momentum and may still have a chance of emerging as the Republican nominee. How much of the Democratic hopes in Texas were premised on Ken Paxton being the nominee and Ken Paxton being the one having the big night tonight? This is a piece of the puzzle. These aren't Democratic voters, but this is not something I think Democrats were necessarily counting on tonight.
- [42:01]
A
John, I want to talk about Daniel Crenshaw, right, The only guy who did not get the Trump endorsement. They differ on a bunch of stuff. You know, foreign relations to be one of them. The war in Ukraine, for instance. What does that say about the fact that he lost and did not get the Trump endorsement? What can we take away from that?
- [42:22]
E
So, number one, I think you're talking about an Afghanistan veteran U.S. navy SEAL, somebody who has been, for the most part, very supportive of the Trump agenda. To your point, there have been some breaks. The big break, though, wasn't about real policy. The big break was about Dan Crenshaw not supporting Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, that was the fissure in their relationship. It was the break that Crenshaw had with the MAGA movement. What does it mean from the perspective of Trump not endorsing him? I think we see it in the result there. 57% for his opponent, 39% for Crenshaw. You know, a longtime incumbent that the president chose not to endorse against Crenshaw, and maybe he was concerned that Crenshaw would actually win even if he endorsed against him, or that there was some other reason not to do it. But even just not making that endorsement while he endorsed all of the rest of the Texas delegation for reelection was a permission structure for all of the magnet voters to go out there and vote against Crenshaw. So I think that's what we saw, and it's a warning to other Republican candidates. As we have seen time and time again with Donald Trump, he cares less about whether his party wins in the general election, not that that district's going to be difficult, than he does about fealty to him, about loyalty to him from each of the individual candidates.
- [43:40]
A
Jade, as we're talking about House races here. Right. I just want to give folks the lay of the land here. For Democrats to take back control of the House, they have to flip three House seats, and then they have to hold on to all their Senate seats and then flip four. Right. They're going to have an uphill battle in the Senate. The House seems like it's more in reach if we're talking about redistricting.
- [44:03]
E
Right.
- [44:03]
A
That is a big story. It seems that's coming out of the House races, specifically in Texas, although there's still a lot of races that are outstanding. The President called on the state GOP to redraw the map last year. Give us a run through of what happened there and how you're seeing it bear out in some of these races so far.
- [44:21]
E
Yeah.
- [44:21]
D
Trump did not like the math that he was going into midterms, favor the party that's not in the White House. And he asked Republicans in Texas to change the map. Yeah, Change the math, rather. And they went out and they drew five more seats. They say that Trump would have won, that Republicans can then go in, but you can't just draw maps. You gotta win seats. And that's the thing that we're gonna see play out here, is that, you know, some of these seats, it was. The map was drawn by a Washington consultant. It was not drawn by the state Legislature there. And I think you see some of these places where it's a soft map in many ways that you could see. A dummy mander is something, you know, it's often called the idea that you draw it and it's gonna help the other party, a dummy mander instead of a gerrymander, because it's only as consistent as your base. And Trump's base isn't always consistent when he's not on the ballot, but consistent
- [45:14]
A
in showing up or consistent in showing
- [45:16]
D
up and who they're voting for. Down ballot, down ballot. Let's go to the 28th district.
- [45:21]
A
Yeah.
- [45:21]
D
This is a district where the seat that they drew, it was redistricted to meet a political aim. They drew a district that if Trump had been, you know, if these districts existed when Trump was on the ballot, it would have been a ten plus Trump seat.
- [45:35]
A
Yeah.
- [45:35]
D
But they actually moved more of Henry Cuellar's voters into that district, so it made it easier for him to win. And then Trump went and pardoned him. So he's not gonna spend his spring campaigning and defending against, you know, money laundering charges. So he's looking pretty good. Cook Political Reports says that one is leaning towards the Democrats, even though that's one of the seats that Republicans count as one of their wins. So, you know, these seats have to be won. And across the country, this is gonna be an issue because it's not just Republicans who have to win them, it's Democrats too. They say they have five seats in California, but it could be four to five seats. Not all of these seats are rock solid for either party. But. But there's a world in which you see Democrats draw 10 new districts and Republicans draw 10 new districts, and it's essentially a wash. And we're back to a net 3 difference in the House of Representatives. I mean, I keep wondering how much are. Is there any buyer's remorse? I mean, you've had a lot of reporting.
- [46:36]
B
Is there?
- [46:37]
E
Yeah, John. Yeah. Within the Republican Party, there is definitely some buyer's remorse.
- [46:42]
A
And from redistricting, there's buyer's remorse.
- [46:44]
E
Yeah. Well, yes, there is a belief that it may backfire among some Republicans. The White House will in insist, and the White House advisors, Trump advisers, they'll all insist that they did the right thing, they did the smart thing. Here's what they did in Texas. First of all, broadly, they started a war over redistricting that may backfire in terms of California redrawing, VA redrawing, etc. But specific to Texas, and Jane mentioned this before. But I want to underline it. They based the way that they redrew the Texas map on Donald Trump's performance in 2024, as if that would be repeated in Texas in 2026 and in 2028 and 2030, whereas that's an anomaly.
- [47:24]
A
To a certain extent, Donald Trump got
- [47:26]
E
more votes than any Republican has ever got for President of the United States. Yeah, he ran up the score with Hispanic voters, who as a group may feel a little differently than they did in 2024 after we have watched the economic program of Donald Trump not do what he said it would do. And watch the immigration program of Donald Trump not just cut off the border, but execute a mass deportation campaign that has included the arrest, incarceration, violence against people who are legal immigrants and even American citizens, not just people who are here undocumented. So I think the idea that the Hispanic vote is, like, sort of locked away for Trump and the Republicans for a long time, meaning that they will do as well as they did in 2024, you'd have to prove it to me before I believe it, and I don't think that's likely to happen. In talking to people who are close to Trump, who advised Trump on the redistricting, even a few months ago, they were saying that they had now advised him that there was a scenario where it could be as bad as a wash for the Republicans who decided to have this fight. And I will tell you, if they are telling Donald Trump that the worst case scenario is a wash, it is. The worst case scenario is a worse than that for Republicans.
- [48:40]
A
So is there a sense, you feel like, Natasha, within that camp, that they may back off efforts for further redistricting? Because, I mean, we have all been talking about the fact that Republicans were gonna literally make this their campaign over the next two years in the lead up to 2028.
- [48:54]
B
Well, they had the embarrassments in Indiana, and, you know, and then Democratic states started saying, okay, well, we can do it, too. And we saw what happened in California. Yeah. And once Indiana sort of said no, Illinois fell in line as well and said they didn't want to really do this. They were only going to do it if Indiana did. So to that extent. Yeah. It wasn't, we'll do it if you do. Right? Well, yeah, exactly.
- [49:22]
A
Well, first, that's what Newsom said, too.
- [49:25]
B
We won't do it if you don't do it. And he was arguing that with Texas and the Texas lawmakers, and they said, we're doing it. So. So, you know, because of Indiana in particular, I think there was just like this. There is a backlash. And how embarrassing is that to the White House that, you know, he's so used to having that wall. No cracks. And there were lots of cracks showing at that time. Yeah. So why keep going down that road? Yeah, Unless they can get away with it. And it's, and it's fairly easy.
- [49:55]
D
I mean, they're gonna keep going down the road.
- [49:57]
A
They're gonna keep going down.
- [49:58]
D
Florida's gonna go this year. Virginia's trying to. Democrats, they have to go to the voters to ask for this. But Florida wants to do it despite the fact that their Constitution says that you can't go partisan gerrymander. They very much want to go and gerrymander. And they say that it's, you know, for reasons other than partisan names.
- [50:16]
B
But yeah, you can't get more Trumpy than Florida, you know, and there's an
- [50:20]
E
incentive for all these people. Look at Gavin Newsom. He won 2025. Now he'd rather win 2027, 2028 for the Democrats, but he had the best year of any Democrat because he said, I want to redistrict and I might be able to get my party funds.
- [50:34]
A
As if he fought basically, to a certain extent. Right. It's about like the fighting mentality. Steve Kornacki, I'm going back to you. The other House races bring us up to date on what we're missing here that you think is important for us to understand when it comes to a through line of what's coming out of Texas and North Carolina as well. And then of course, the governor as well. What are we seeing there in Texas?
- [50:53]
C
Yeah, I mean, one of the House races here, you know, it's not a very close primary tonight, but I think this district is going to loom very large nationally in November 34th district. This is a Democratic held district. Vicente Gonzalez is the Democratic incumbent. This is very much part of that story of deep South Texas along the border, heavily Hispanic counties that have swung very hard towards Trump so much that Republicans. This is part of their redrawing efforts. They believe this is a Democratic seat they can flip. They drew it to become. Trump would have won this district under its new configuration by 11 points. So a Democrat's trying to, trying to hang on here. And this Republican primary was interesting tonight because you had Myra Flores, who's part of this story, of this history, of recent history in deep South Texas. She actually won a special election to Congress a couple years ago, served for a few months. She ran for a full term against Vicente Gonzalez lost narrowly, came back in 2024, lost narrowly again. She's out running for a third time. But the Republican Party, state leaders in Texas, national leaders in Washington said, you know, two times as enough, they wanted a different candidate, same last name, by the way, Eric Flores, no relation. And it looks like they're on track to get their candidate in this race. So I think that sets up here Republican redistricting in Texas. This is the district they targeted. This is the candidate they wanted. And this is part of that story of that, you know, Trump growth with Hispanic voters, especially along the border, especially in deep South Texas, versus Democrats saying, hey, you know, we're starting to win some of those voters back. Trump now, once he's back in the White House, there's a backlash, Bill. So what's going to give there in a district again, the way this is drawn now, Trump would have won this district by 11 points. Republicans get their candidate. Let's see how Vicente Gonzalez holds on, holds up, I should say, because this is a race that I think we're going to be very close and we're going to be talking about and watching nationally for the next few months.
- [52:47]
A
I got one question for you from YouTube. What is written on Steve's rolled up paper? Magic Spells, Fuzzy Bath, the first page of the new mystery thriller he's writing?
- [52:58]
C
If only I were that talented. These are vote targets in the 23rd district for Tony Gonzalez.
- [53:04]
A
And is it the same paper that you've been holding the whole time?
- [53:06]
D
No.
- [53:07]
C
We got vote targets for the Senate race. We got the Republican primary, spilled water. We got North Carolina. So there you go.
- [53:15]
E
Everyone should go go out and buy Steve Kornacki's excellent book, the Red and the Blue. If you're looking for a book to buy that Steve Kornacki wrote, there is one that you should have on your show.
- [53:25]
A
Okay, I'm being yelled at by my executive producer that we have four minutes left. Kornacki, you're the best. Thank you, my friend.
- [53:33]
C
Give John Allen. Appreciate that. 20 bucks for me. That's very kind.
- [53:36]
A
And tell Adam Noboa, your producer as well, he did a fantastic job. Guys, we got a couple minutes left. So I kind of want to get your final thoughts on this historic night, the first of the midterms season. Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas kind of kicking us off.
- [53:50]
E
John Allen, Good Lord, Stick. Well, this is all year for this podcast because this was a heck of a kickoff. You've got an incumbent going down in a primary, maybe multiple incumbents going down. You've got a Dog fight going on between Cornyn and Paxton on the Republican side. There you have a close race with tons of people showing up for Democrats in the Senate race in Texas. This is going to be a fascinating election year and everyone is so plugged in and everyone is so engaged. And this was just the kind of night, I mean, obviously it would have been nice to get results a little bit earlier, but just the kind of night that sort of whets the appetite for those of us that are, you know, not only love politics, are fascinated by it, but really understand how much politics means in terms of, of the substance of what's going on in our lives.
- [54:40]
A
One word takeaway for tonight, John Allen. Define the night.
- [54:43]
E
Wild.
- [54:44]
A
Wild. Okay, let's go with that.
- [54:46]
D
Jay, you know, I'm your election policy reporter, so all I am seeing is just how much efforts to change what happens at the ballot box before the voters go and cast their ballots is influencing voter experience, is influencing the outcome. I'm talking about redistricting, drawing the maps in order to get a predetermined outcome, as well as conspiracy theories that motivated a major change in Dallas county and left thousands of people going to the wrong place. And like, I'm a mom, I don't have a lot of time. If I go and try and vote, I don't know if I have time to keep going. There's a lot of people who may have just chosen not to vote, but of course we had huge turn. So a lot of people did turn out. Yeah, I mean, this is, there's a lot of people trying to put a foot on the scale of democracy in this country. And I think it's really interesting to see how voters engage with that.
- [55:39]
B
Yeah, Natasha, I am going to, I'm going to, you know, go back to the economy, which is where we always end up. Right. In every election. And you know, to the extent that there was a through line, I think when you look at Talarico, when you look at people like in North Carolina, 11, Jamie Ager, they focused a lot on the accounting. Talarico's messaging was a lot about the billionaire class. Ager talked about the billionaire class. He also talked about up the Epstein class. And you know, we didn't even bring
- [56:10]
A
up Epstein in this conversation.
- [56:12]
B
Well, I got him in, got him
- [56:14]
A
in at the end.
- [56:15]
B
But think about all of those issues. And I'll bring up one more which is ice. And I, I think this is really, I just point this out really quickly. State representative, so down ballot race, North Carolina, Carla Cunningham, seven time incumbent just ousted 70%. She lost 22% to 70% to some. She made a deciding vote to allow ICE to allow local police, to compel local police to cooperate with ice. Charlotte's Web was something that went through North Carolina. It was wildly unpopular and it flew out of there really, really quickly, presumably because Republicans were saying to the White House, this is not going well with people. That's just, that's kind of indicative. So, I mean, to the extent that we are, we are looking at really local issues that is impacting people where they are, and that's the economy in North Carolina specifically, that was an ICE issue.
- [57:13]
A
Steve Kornacki, thank you. Wherever you are. Hopefully you're in the car on your way home already. Natasha Korecki, thank you. Jane. Tim, thank you. John Allen, thank you. That is a wrap, everybody, for here's the scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Bisugian. Thank you for watching. You can rewatch on YouTube or listen anywhere you get your podcast. And make sure to subscribe. If you like what you're watching or what you heard, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you tomorrow after whatever happens overnight. The perfect night in good shows, comfy clothes and Gorton's Seafood. Skip the reservations and make restaurant quality seafood at home with Gorton's, from crispy fish fillets and fish sticks and to popcorn shrimp. That goes perfectly with your movie lineup, no matter what kind of night you're craving.
- [58:06]
D
Gorton's has been making seafood easy and
- [58:09]
A
accessible for over 175 years so you can enjoy the goodness of the sea right at home. Visit gortons.com to find recipe inspiration or a store near you.